A significant portion of data that is communicated through a network or interconnect structure requires priority handling during transmission.
Heavy information or packet traffic in a network or interconnection system can cause congestion, creating problems that result in the delay or loss of information. Heavy traffic can cause the system to store information and attempt to send the information multiple times, resulting in extended communication sessions and increased transmission costs. Conventionally, a network or interconnection system may handle all data with the same priority so that all communications are similarly afflicted by poor service during periods of high congestion. Accordingly, “quality of service” (QOS) has been recognized and defined, which may be applied to describe various parameters that are subject to minimum requirements for transmission of particular data types. QOS parameters may be utilized to allocate system resources such as bandwidth. QOS parameters typically include considerations of cell loss, packet loss, read throughput, read size, time delay or latency, jitter, cumulative delay, and burst size. QOS parameters may also be associated with an urgent data type such as audio or video streaming information in a multimedia application, where the data packets must be sent downstream immediately, or discarded after a brief time period.
What are needed are a system and operating technique that allow information with a high priority to communicate through a network or interconnect structure with a high quality of service handling capability.